Back in June I made a journal outlining what I wanted to do with my art and how it was moving along. Things have been far too busy lately to even entertain the idea of making new models, so my art career, if you want to call it that, is on hold for the moment.

That said, I’ve had plenty of late nights to daydream and think about what I’d like to do, and this has helped me plan ahead for the day when I’ll have more time again. I’d like to put some of these thoughts out there for everyone to see, but there’s a little something I’d like to share first.

In the last journal, I asked a serious question: can you accidentally dox yourself by drawing the places where you lived or visited as a child?

To make a long story short, I don’t think it’ll be a problem for people like me. I spent some time looking over my old stomping grounds using Google Streetview the other day, and man, everything’s changed so much.

For example, I have a lot of good memories of the school I attended. It had a huge playground with swings, tetherball, monkey bars, and other stuff to keep kids occupied during recess. Today there’s none of that. The playground area is still there, but all the equipment is gone. It’s just a big empty space covered with asphalt.

Even the parks I used to play at are drastically different. Some times it’s a good change, like how one park replaced the infamous “death slide” with a big kiddie pool that looks really nice. Other things look a lot sadder, like the sandbox that’s now all locked behind a chain link fence for some reason.

And the less said about the house I grew up in, the better. It looks like the sort of place that people would say is haunted. I mean, they’d be right, it definitely was, but now it actually looks the part.

So yeah, nobody stands a chance in furry hell of recognizing any of the places where I grew up.

On a different note, I’ve been thinking over what I’d like to do with my art here, and I’m going to change directions a little. Originally the plan was to focus on recreating or retelling some of the things I remember from childhood. Some of that was going to be stuff I actually did, while other things were going to be made up but still based in reality. I was also going to do some “fantasy” bits where I’d show the characters’ imaginary adventures from the imaginary perspective. Kinda like how the Muppet Babies or Rugrats mixed the real and pretend worlds together.

Lately I’ve been thinking that’s a little too limiting. I think it’ll be more fun to bring in more fantasy content, like fan art and completely original ideas. More like Fantastic Max than Rugrats, if anyone else remembers back that far.

While this does mean I’ll have to make a whole lot of new models, it would also mean that I don’t need to worry about being realistic or accurate, and that’s a lot of extra room to work with!

So that’s what’s going on over here. Hopefully I’ll get some time to work on it before winter comes around, but only time will tell.